Full Transcription
{Music}
Jonathan Mosen:
Aira is a free app. Anybody can download the app for free. You can sign up as a free user.
Jeff Thompson:
Please welcome Jonathan Mosen.
Jonathan Mosen:
We slashed the entry point, so now it’s as cheap as $29 a month.
Jeff Thompson:
Aira’s Vice President of Australasia and Explorer Communications.
Jonathan Mosen:
You can go to an Aira Access location, that’s a physical place where Aira is available at no charge to you.
Jeff Thompson:
Jonathan gives us an overview of the new training modules from Aira.
Jonathan Mosen:
I think the fundamental thing that Aira does really is it breaks down the fundamental barrier of blindness, which when it comes down to it is access to information.
Jeff Thompson:
And, if you want to find out more about Aira, check them out on the web at A-I-R-A-.-I-O.
Jonathan Mosen:
when an agent takes a picture using your camera, those pictures are put in a folder in the Aira app and they’re labeled correctly, so that when you’re perusing the pictures later you know exactly which one you’re dealing with. Well, Jeff this seems like a good opportunity to introduce a new promotion that we’ve just unveiled at Aira that allows anybody who has a free Aira account to use the full Aira experience. In other words, use Aira anytime, anywhere. What we’re doing is we’re offering anyone with a free Aira account, 30 minutes of full Aira service that they can use courtesy of us, absolutely free over a seven day period.
Jeff Thompson:
And for more podcasts with a blindness perspective, check us out on the web at www.bindabilities.com follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities, download the free Blind Abilities app from the App Store and the Google Play Store. That’s two words, Blind Abilities.
Jonathan Mosen:
And, I really got a feel for what people were enjoying visually about the fireworks and the agent seemed to enjoy it too.
Jeff Thompson:
It’s like having audio descriptive real life.
Jonathan Mosen:
Yeah, I mean it is. It’s like live audio described. It’s amazing.
Jeff Thompson:
And now, without further ado, here’s Jonathan Mosen. Welcome to Blind Abilities. I’m Jeff Thompson. Aira, named one of the best inventions of 2018 by Time Magazine, is one of the fastest growing technologies in the blindness community and with artificial intelligence in its Chloe reading capabilities with OCR and the virtual assistants, where you have sighted assistance from a trained agent.
Jeff Thompson:
Just a few years ago, Aira introduced their virtual assistance and today they have not stopped improving, innovating and creating more opportunities for people to become an Aira Explorer and in the studio with me today is Jonathan Mosen. He’s the Vice President of Australasia and Explorer Communications. Jonathan, thank you for joining us and welcome to Blind Abilities.
Jonathan Mosen:
It’s really good of you to have me on, Jeff. Great to be here.
Jeff Thompson:
Jonathan, I’m excited that you’re on the show today because I was just on the Aira website and checked out the training modules just released by Aira. And, what a great resource for people to access and learn about the Aira experience.
Jonathan Mosen:
Well, thank you. We’re really excited about it because we’re doing two things with these new training modules for Aira. One is that, we show people through the app and through the Horizon smart glass technology that we have at Aira, but the other thing about Aira is that it’s a really new kind of product, right? This visual interpretation. The fact that you can get audio description effectively of anything at any time and so, that is a big change for us. So, not only do we talk about how you use the app and how you use the technology but we also talk about what do you use it for, how would you incorporate this technology into your life?
Jeff Thompson:
I really liked that these training modules covered every form factor from Aira. There’s something there for everyone.
Jonathan Mosen:
Yes, we do have three generations of smart glasses in Aira’s short history and so, I wanted to make sure that we cover them all. Obviously, if you subscribe to Aira now and you get one of our smart glass options, that will be the Horizon technology and we’ll be developing that and going forward with some new features including some AI functions. But we did want to go all the way back to the beginning for people who still have the other technology.
Jeff Thompson:
Jonathan, you mentioned the various ways one can use Aira, whether it will be with a smartphone or one of the generations of Aira glasses and here in Minnesota, we have Target, YMCA, Walgreens and the airport all being Aira Access locations where anybody can download the Aira app, walk in and be an Aira Explorer.
Jonathan Mosen:
Right. Aira is a free app and anybody can download the app for free from Google Play or the iOS App Store and you can sign up as a free user, and you can do a couple of things once you’ve done that. One is you can go to an Aira Access location. That’s a physical place where Aira is available at no charge to you. It’s kind of like when a business offers free Wi-Fi and when you walk into that business, you’ll get a push notification from the Aira App saying to you, “You’re now in an Aira Access location.”
Jonathan Mosen:
And when you do that, then you can just use Aira to your heart’s content. It might be to do some shopping, browsing the shelves, it could be to navigate an airport, to get to your flight, an Aira agent will read a boarding pass to you, all those things. The other way that you can use Aira is for specific tasks and you can do that anywhere. You can do it from home if you want, and a couple of examples of that, we’ve got the Intuit QuickBooks small business offer. That means that if you operate a small business, you can use Aira from anywhere for anything pertaining to that small business.
Jonathan Mosen:
It could be doing the accounts but it also, could be getting somewhere when it is a job related function, or reading certain documents ,or anything pertaining to you operating your business. We have and offer with Dispero as well, the makers of JAWS and ZoomText and fusion. So, if there were certain issues that are covered by that offer, you can use Aira from anywhere and get assistance with that. I would say that it’s a great idea for anybody. Even if you’re not quite sure whether you’ll go for one of our monthly plans or not to have the free app on the phone that you’re signed up as a guest and you never know, in your travels you just might get a ping to tell you that Aira is available free where you are.
Jeff Thompson:
That’s really awesome because I’ve heard Aira is just for the rich and famous but with all these Aira Access locations being created, anybody can just download the Aira app and instantly become an Aira Explorer. It seems to me that more value is coming to the Aira Explorers.
Jonathan Mosen:
We’re trying really hard to do that, Jeff. And the other thing I would say is that we made a change recently where we slashed the entry point for getting into one of the monthly plans with Aira. Now it’s as cheap as $29 a month to dip your toe in the water and find out whether Aira has a place in your life. We’re absolutely confident that it will and the other thing too, is that we are working hard to secure agreements with many states in the United States through Voc Rehab, we are working with VA as well, a number of these agencies.
Jonathan Mosen:
That if you can justify Aira in your working life and in various other capacities, if you’re eligible for certain US government programs you may well be able to receive funding for Aira through that as well because in the end Aira is assistive technology and again, we’re doing that education right now. We’re having to educate people around the United States about this new product and explain to them what it can mean. The fact that if you’re working in an employment situation, you may well have a bunch of prints that piles up until your reader that may have been funded arrives for the once a week or twice a week visit, whatever it is.
Jonathan Mosen:
But with Aira on the job, it would mean that you would be able to get that information read to you instantly as you need it. So having Aira may well improve your prospects of being employed and make you more productive on the job and it’s a pretty compelling case.
Jeff Thompson:
It is and Jonathan, my wife Laurie, she loves the fact that she doesn’t have to go across the cubicles to have someone take time out of their day to come over to read something that she needs read. She just fires up Aira and reads it. She does it when she wants to and she doesn’t lose any time. She just moves on.
Jonathan Mosen:
That’s really good to hear and that’s right. We’re only just beginning with our AI offerings and we’ll be seeing a lot more of that but I totally understand what she’s saying. I have four sighted children and I try to do my best to not overly tax their indulgence and I just find it wonderful that I can ask an Aira agent, who are effectively an employee of mine for the moment that I’m on the call. I’m paying for the Aira Service, so I don’t feel like I’m a burden to anyone. I don’t feel like I have to rush the process because as long as I’m willing to use my Aira minutes, I can get as much information, as much detail, ask as many questions as I want. That is actually quite a big change for us as a community and I think it’s exciting.
Jeff Thompson:
You mentioned using Aira at the airport and typically when my wife and I travel, we get to the gate and I will go find some food or just find something and come back and now, she fires up Aira and takes off for 20 to 40 minutes and I have become the luggage attendee. And, she’ll come on back and have something to eat and just be describing to me the new stores or what’s going on around the airport area and what happened to me just lately, and Jonathan you’ll like this. It was a first, it was … I didn’t see it coming.
Jeff Thompson:
As we approached the Kiss & Go lane at the airport, where you get out tuck and go. She said to me, “Don’t hug me too big because I got Aira on,” And I just smiled like, “Oh, that’s cute,” but when we got ready to get the luggage and she got the luggage and her guide dog and before I realized what was going on, she’s talking to an Aira agent and she took off to the doors and I just stood there for a second thinking, “Wow, this is happening,” and that was a first.
Jonathan Mosen:
It’s a big deal for me and I would certainly never suggest that it’s not possible for a blind person to navigate an airport independently without Aira. What I would say though is that our travel skills do vary. In my case, for example, I wear hearing aids. I have a hearing impairment and I find those noisy environments, whether it be a crowd at a hotel lobby or an airport really challenging to do independently because my hearing aid gets overloaded with sound and so, either the hearing aid tries to apply some pretty aggressive compression to try and make life bearable for my ears or if I set it to a linear program, I just get overwhelmed with sound coming from everywhere. So for me, I would always request Meet and Assist and then a couple of things happen.
Jonathan Mosen:
First, the quality of the Meet and Assist is quite variable. Sometimes you get someone fantastic, other times, well you know not so much. What also happens is I personally feel an obligation to let that person get on with assisting somebody else as soon as possible. I do my best to get straight to the gate and then I will sit there and I’ll listen to podcasts. I had an experience not so long ago, where I was at LA International Airport, which is now also an Aira Access location and I was able to check in.
Jonathan Mosen:
I held my boarding pass up to my horizon glasses and said to the agent, “Okay, where are we going?” I got through security and when we got to the gate I asked the agent to look at the flight board and she told me that there had been a delay and my plane was gonna be about 90 minutes late. Normally, I would have just sat there and listened to podcasts or do something like that but I was able to wander off and with the help of the agent find somewhere to get myself a salad and then what happens?
Jonathan Mosen:
Well, what typically happens at airports and places like this is you’re looking for somewhere to sit to eat that salad and as a totally blind guy, I kind of put my hand on the back of the chair and maybe surreptitiously pull the chair to see if anybody is sitting on it and if I’m unlucky, I might touch someone’s back and attract their attention. Finding a free seat is a mission but thanks to Aira, they found me the only vacant table in the area.
Jonathan Mosen:
I sat there, disconnected the call and ate my salad and then, got assistance to navigate back to my gate. Now for me, as somebody who does have a hearing impairment, I will not have attempted that before and I wouldn’t have thought about summoning Meet and Assist to help me do that and I would have just sort of sat there. It’s a big change for me and many of us.
Jeff Thompson:
I totally agree with you because there’s so many times that I’ll receive messages from people who are waiting in the car while their spouse or their kids are going in shopping, doing something and they’re just taking this time to go through their phone and stuff because it’s not as efficient or convenient to fumble through the store and try to buy what you want. But now with Aira, people are gonna get off the couch, are gonna get out of the car, they’re gonna go explore things. I think this is a real game changer.
Jonathan Mosen:
Me too and it’s one of the things that I enjoy about shopping online. I remember the first time I shopped at a supermarket online, I was absolutely staggered by just how many different varieties of all sorts of things bread, cereal sighted people have to choose from. I really didn’t have any appreciation of that and now that same freedom is available to me whenever I go into any store because not everything is online and I can take advantage of the specials and sometimes you just want to get your hands physically on something before you buy it, so it is great.
Jonathan Mosen:
I think the fundamental thing that Aira does really is it breaks down the fundamental barrier of blindness, which when it comes down to it is access to information and I’m using the term information in its really broadest sense. It could be signage, it could be what somebody looks like. Obviously, it’s printed information written on paper that we can’t access. In the end, it all comes down to inflammation and Aira in real-time is turning that inaccessible information of all kinds. That visual information into something that’s audible or even textual now of course and accessible.
Jeff Thompson:
Well, that’s great. Jonathan, another thing I want to mention is we go on vacations and my wife is one that likes to have a lot of pictures so she can post them on Facebook and stuff. Well, she was having pictures taken, and the agent is putting them in the folders and labeling them and later on I’m getting these Facebook notifications, “Picture of the light house, picture of the channel, picture of the ocean.” It was just something … Let me just say, typically, I’m the one that helps her with technology sometimes but she was doing this all on her own. Posting the pictures to Facebook with a little description to them and all that and she got that from the labels and this has really changed, this is independence.
Jonathan Mosen:
Yes, it is and it’s also peace of mind. One of the things that made me reluctant to post pictures that I had taken to social media, even though Apple has done a fantastic job of telling you when a face is in the view or whatever. I can’t really verify the kind of total quality of the output when it’s done. I can’t see that photo and it always made me nervous about posting something whose quality I couldn’t verify probably because I just need to chill a little bit with something like that but it did make me nervous.
Jonathan Mosen:
And so, now that I know that somebody has taken a really great photo. I have a lot more confidence about sharing those pictures with my family or posting to social media. My wife Bonnie, she just couldn’t believe the timing, when I came home from CSUN 0 last year with Aira. She was just starting her journalism diploma and she had to cover a big festival. It’s a big street festival and there were bands and all sorts of exciting things happening and many pictures to take.
Jonathan Mosen:
She had decided to buddy up with a fellow student to help get the pictures that she needed because these days all journalists have to be multimedia professionals. She got Aira literally the day before that festival and instantly she realized, “Hey, I can let my buddy do her thing and focus on her pictures because now I’ve got Aira.” And boy, Aira took some amazing pictures and in fact a lot of people were saying how did the blind woman take some of the best pictures in the course of their festival.
Jeff Thompson:
Jonathan, I think this is a very unique part of the service because taking pictures, labeling, accessing them. That’s the interaction that you do with your agent, your app and the Explorer. Can you explain this process to the listeners?
Jonathan Mosen:
Yeah. One of the things about taking the pictures even if you have some confidence that you’ve got a good one is it can sometimes be quite challenging to find out what is the actual picture that you now want to send when you’ve taken a bunch and you’re reviewing them afterwards. When an agent takes a picture using your camera, they effectively take remote control of the camera. They’ll ask you to point it in a certain area, once you know what it is you want to take. Those pictures are put in a folder in the Aira app and they’re labeled correctly, so that when you’re perusing the pictures later you know exactly which one you’re dealing with. And, you can use the iOS Share Sheets or the android equivalent and send those pictures on.
Jeff Thompson:
Oh, that’s nice. So, that’s how she got all that done?
Jonathan Mosen:
Yeah, magical isn’t it?
Jeff Thompson:
Yeah. Jonathan, we started out by talking about the new training modules from Aira on the website and now you’ve opened up the Aira Explorers Group to anybody.
Jonathan Mosen:
Yes. When I came on board, our view was that the Aira Explorer community, which is our official community that we now run on Groups.io was kind of like a benefit that you got when you joined Aira and paid for a monthly plan. So you have access to some members of the Aira team. We try and engage with you, we try and respond. Now of course we’re moving to a model now where we would like the whole world to be an Aira Access location.
Jonathan Mosen:
Wouldn’t it be great? You’ve landed on planet earth, so this is a whole I access location and so, there will be an increasing number of people who are using Aira for free in more places and we didn’t want to miss out on their feedback nor did we want to miss out on them having the opportunity to pair up with other explorers who may have had a bit more experience to perhaps encourage them to use Aira in situations they hadn’t thought of before and maybe incorporate Aira into their lives. We had to think about this and on balance we decided to open up the Aira community to anyone who has an interest in Aira, who’d like to join and get some answers.
Jeff Thompson:
Well, that seems so much like the blind community. When I first lost my eyesight, I was wondering, “Where do they keep the blind?” And, until I met role model people or people who had experienced things or were doing stuff like heck they’re blind. I was brand new to it. I didn’t know anything about it and just like the Explorers. If you don’t know much about it, what better way to learn from it from someone that’s using it and get their experiences.
Jonathan Mosen:
Yes, every community has its kind of culture, and protocol, and etiquette and so, we are throwing the doors wide open. We’re saying, “Look, even if you’re using Aira for free right now or even if you haven’t even downloaded the app yet. If you really want to understand the kind of impact it’s having on people. Then come join us, check it out, ask your questions and there are many knowledgeable explorers in that group who would be happy to answer,” and it’s not just a kind of a praise fest. We are not perfect, we’re a company made up of human beings and so we can always improve, and we will sometimes make mistakes. We would like to think it’s a very positive dialogue, and we learn a lot as members of the Aira team and hopefully, explorers can grow in the use of Aira as well.
Jeff Thompson:
Jonathan, I know you mentioned the 30 minutes for $29 introductory package but if someone is still sitting on the fence. Could you tell the listeners what other levels or packages are available to Aira Explorers or future Aira Explorers.
Jonathan Mosen:
Well, Jeff this seems like a good opportunity to introduce a new promotion that we’ve just unveiled at Aira that allows anybody who has a free Aira account to use the full Aira experience. In other words, use Aira anytime, anywhere, for a wide range of visual interpretation tasks. What we’re doing is we’re offering anyone with a free Aira account, 30 minutes of full Aira service that they can use courtesy of us absolutely free over a seven day period.
Jonathan Mosen:
If you have a guest account with Aira right now, then all you have to do is activate the trial. You can go into the app and you’ll clearly find an option that will let you go through the activation process and then, you’ll have seven days to use that 30 complimentary minutes of Aira service. If you’ve not signed up for Aira service before even as a guest. Then you can download the free app from the App Store for iOS or Google Play, install the app and then you can proceed to create the account. It’s a really simple and fully accessible signup process and then when you’re ready, you can go ahead and activate that seven day free trial, and get 30 minutes to use for a range of tasks.
Jonathan Mosen:
Now you don’t have to use all that 30 minutes at once, so it could be a whole bunch of tasks that just take two or three minutes to complete. Many of the things that people use Aira for don’t actually take that long to complete. When you’re ready, you can upgrade from being a guest to getting one of our monthly plans right from within the app. Remember also that we do have a referral program, so if you know somebody who is an Aira Explorer right now, I’m sure they would be delighted to refer you because when they refer you, you will also get your first month of service free.
Jonathan Mosen:
And, if you’re an Explorer yourself right now, remember that you as an Explorer who does the referring gets a credit added to their Aira account once the new explorer begins paying for the service after their first month. There are many opportunities to experience Aira at no charge and get full service but in terms of the regular monthly plans that are available. After the $29 you go to $99 and that gives you 120 minutes and then you go up from there.
Jonathan Mosen:
The important thing to note though is that we don’t lock you into a contract. And so, if you find that you don’t have sufficient minutes or maybe you’re in a situation where you know you are going to use Aira more in a given month, perhaps because you’re going on vacation or you’re doing something pretty travel intensive or something like that. You can actually upgrade at any time just for that one month say to the $199 plan that gives you 300 minutes and then when you’ve done with that particular use case, you can downgrade again so that’s pretty cool.
Jonathan Mosen:
The other thing too is that if you have a one off need, you can buy add-on minutes on top of your plan for all but the original $29 plan and that gives you 50 additional minutes and they never expire. They’re only used when you exhaust your plan. For example, if you find you’re running a little short at the end of the month, you can buy 50 extra minutes. If you’ve only consumed 20 of those minutes when your plan has renewed. Then you’ve still got 30 minutes to play with at some later stage when another of your plans expire.
Jeff Thompson:
Oh, that’s nice. Now talking about consumer experience. I’ve noticed on the Aira training modules, you’ve captured some stories from Aira Explorers showing different ways that they utilize the Aira smart glasses. Can you talk about that and tell people where they can go listen to these experiences?
Jonathan Mosen:
The website is Aira, that’s spelled A-I-R-A-.-I-O and you can go straight to aira.io/training. You’ll find the modules there and they’re available in three forms. One is that you can search the page for some particular item you’re interested in or you can navigate to each module, they have their own heading label and then you can play each section of the module using our accessible online players. They stream right from the site but you can also download the full training course as an MP3 collection or a DAISY book that plays really nicely on the victor stream or FS reader on your PC or Voice Stream reader on your smartphone and you can get it that way as well.
Jonathan Mosen:
Now, we also are about to launch Aira Cast, which is our podcast. Which doesn’t in any way mean that we want you to stop listening to Blind Abilities but it is a way for us to keep people informed directly from Aira about what is happening, we’ll have some profiles of agents, we’ll have some Explorer profiles and that is about to ship its first episode as well. That’s another way that people can stay in touch with us.
Jeff Thompson:
Well, that’s great and that’s all done right from the web?
Jonathan Mosen:
Yes, absolutely. Yup. And, Aira Cast will be available wherever people get their podcast. As we record this, it’s in the process of being approved by iTunes, and Spotify, and Google Play and all those places you would expect to find it.
Jeff Thompson:
I’m sure people will be looking for that Aira Cast coming soon. Now Jonathan, something else has happened over this last year. Aira global 24/7.
Jonathan Mosen:
Yeah, and we’re super excited about this. This was always the end goal to make sure that Aira was there for you whenever you need it and it’s not just 24/7 but 365 as well. On Christmas Day we were there, on the US Thanksgiving holiday we were also there and it makes a big difference for those of us in my part of the world, in New Zealand and Australia because Aira used to close at 10:00 p.m. Pacific so 1:00 a.m. Eastern and that would be peak time for many people in our part of the world and Aira wasn’t there.
Jonathan Mosen:
We knew that as we started to expand, it would be something we’d have to address and the key to doing that of course is making sure that we do so without any way diluting the quality of the agent experience because we get fantastic, good quality feedback from people who say the agents are great and we wanted to keep that high quality experience going and I think we’ve been able to do that. We can say that six months on that that’s been the case.
Jeff Thompson:
And, I think that’s one of the big differences out there in the world, when they connect up with the agent they are getting someone that has gone through training and is skilled in working with particular stuff that a blind vision impaired person would be asking or need.
Jonathan Mosen:
Yes. It is a huge point of difference for us and one of the things that you will hear on the Aira training modules is we explain exactly what is involved in becoming an agent. First of all, you’ve got to even be selected for an interview. You go through a 30-day training process and then we see how much you’ve absorbed as a result of that training process before we let you live onto Aira’s dashboard and talking to Explorers. So you know, sometimes if you’re working with a volunteer you might get somebody super, and we’ve all experienced this walking down the street, right?
Jonathan Mosen:
You sort of hear somebody walking past and you say, “Excuse me, can you tell me the way to whatever?” And some people will say, “It’s that way,” and be really helpful like that. Some people will point you in the completely wrong direction. It’s important when you’re paying for a service like Aira, that we take great care in choosing people who cannot only give you clear information but also accurate information. And, our Aira agents have a dashboard in front of them.
Jonathan Mosen:
People are familiar with the software that they use, the app for iOS and Android but there are a lot of other software tools involved in Aira and the agent dashboard is software that these agents are running and it gives them all sorts of information about the Explorer. You’ll know that when you first use Aira, we go through what’s called an onboarding process where we learned about things like the way you like to hear directions, information about whether you have any allergies that we need to know about, various personalization verbosity.
Jonathan Mosen:
Just like a screen reader, where say many screen readers might offer you three levels of verbosity. We offer your levels of verbosity as well, customized to what you want to hear when you’re traveling for example. We go through that onboarding process and when you call into an agent, in the future that agent will get all of that information and make sure that you’re not getting some sort of generic experience but you are getting an experience that has been customized for you. The kind of experience you said you want.
Jonathan Mosen:
The dashboard will also display information from websites and location information, so we can tell you about things that are nearby. In certain internal locations, we might be able to display map information and that’s important because we know how cool GPS is. But where GPS starts to break down is maybe that last 30 feet or so, where you’re looking for the door to a particular location and then when you get inside. Aira can assist with all of those things as well, so it’s a really special and quite carefully designed experience.
Jeff Thompson:
And, if you’re using an Uber or Lyft, they can actually facilitate that whole setup.
Jonathan Mosen:
That’s right. And, some people I talk to say, “Well, I’m perfectly capable of ordering an Uber or Lyft for myself, thank you very much.” But I’ll tell you where it’s really handy and if I’m at home and I want an Uber. I would typically just use the app but when I’m at a location that’s quite crowded and busy and there might be multiple people calling for Uber’s or it can be difficult for me to hear, there are a lot of cars going by. I will use either for that because on the dashboard there were two things that the agent can then see. The Uber or Lyft API will give the agent access to information from the app side. In other words, where the vehicle is and the Aira agent will be able to tell you, “Okay, I can see that the Uber driver is turning into such and such a street and they’re a couple of blocks away.”
Jonathan Mosen:
You can track that and that’s something we can do accessibly in the Uber App or Lyft App but then when it gets close to you, the Aira agent can help you through your video feed coming from your camera or your smart glasses to intercept with the driver and I have found this incredibly useful. I was at an airport recently, where the Uber driver for whatever reason declined to go where they were supposed to, to the designated pickup point and I had a great time chasing the Uber driver around the car park at this airport until we suddenly connected.
Jonathan Mosen:
Another extraordinary one I had Jeff and I’ve never had this before, but I was really thankful that I had Aira on the line for this. I had an Uber driver go past me and decide that I wasn’t the passenger that he was picking up and when we finally intercepted. The agent and I found him and I went to the passenger door and I opened the door. He said, “You didn’t order an Uber, did you?” I said, “Yeah, I did. Why?” He said, “Well, how can you order an Uber if you’re blind?” And so, he decided that the blind guy couldn’t possibly be his uber passenger because he didn’t know that a blind person could call an Uber and had I not had Aira there, I would probably have lost that driver and had to call another one.
Jeff Thompson:
You’re educating the Uber drivers?
Jonathan Mosen:
That’s another interesting thing. I don’t know whether you’ve found this but Aira is an incredible icebreaker and I haven’t seen anything like this since I had a guide dog. I don’t have a guide dog now because I do a lot of international travel and in New Zealand we have a pretty disease-free country. We don’t have rabies and things like that. So, when you bring a guide dog back into New Zealand having taken it out, it’s a real process man. You’ve got to go through quarantine and things.
Jonathan Mosen:
Anyway, when I had a guide dog, I found that people would stop me and say, “You know what your dog’s name?” And, “Isn’t she beautiful?” And I’d say, “Yes, thank you. She takes after her owner,” and then we get to talking and Aira is the same way. I’ve been stopped by people saying, “I see you navigating around here with these glasses on. What exactly are they doing and how does it work?” And, I tell them about Aira and it’s amazing how many people get their phone out and look it up right there and then on their phone either for the website or the app.
Jeff Thompson:
And look where you come, I think it was one year ago, was it CSUN, CES? You’ve discovered Aira or put them on. You didn’t discover them, you put them on and you’re coming up to that anniversary right now. Look how far it’s come in one year.
Jonathan Mosen:
Yeah, that was the CSUN Conference in March that I personally used Aira for the first time. I’d interviewed people before about Aira and I was pretty skeptical, I have to say, because I deal with a lot of technology and I try it and when you use technology a lot, it’s kind of incremental because you’re just so involved. I wasn’t really expecting a lot but my goodness, when I used Aira that first time and wandered through the very crowded, echoey, massive lobbies at the hotel for CSUN in San Diego at the Hyatt there. It was one heck of a game changer.
Jonathan Mosen:
And, you’re right, when I think of all the features that Aira has added in less than a year Aira Live, the Messenger feature and we’ve got Horizon rolled out. This company, and I’ve worked in a few tech companies, has the most incredible frenetic pace and it’s just such a joy to be a part of because one day is so different from the last one.
Jeff Thompson:
Oh yeah. You were just using the phone there and then you moved to the glasses and then the Horizon glasses and Chloe I think was starting out being used at that point. Now you have Andrew Root coming on board from seeing AI developer. Where do you see Chloe going? It could be leaps and bounds in a few months or in next year? Where do you see it?
Jonathan Mosen:
I think what I can say in general is that the artificial intelligence component of Aira will grow in substantial and exciting ways, and we have Andrew Root, who’s obviously very gifted in this area, a guru in the artificial intelligence area, We have a really talented engineering team. I just love working with them and see what they’re coming up with. We’ve got obviously people like Greg Stilson, who has a well-deserved reputation for excellence in the product management side.
Jonathan Mosen:
We’ve got a great team there and I think what you’ll see in the next little while is that we’ll be using the information. The general information about the way blind people interact with certain situations to design more AI solutions that are really quite compelling and work well. There’s a lot being cooked up in the lab and certainly Chloe is going to be, or the Horizon device is going to be the pivotal way that we unveil those in the first instance. I think you’ll see some pretty exciting stuff in the next year or so.
Jeff Thompson:
Oh yeah, exciting times. Now Jonathan, with all this technology and all the notoriety, we have the Time magazine, “One of the best inventions of 2018.” How do you see this in the future? Is this something that might transcend into the sighted world for some special purposes out there that they could utilize this type of technology?
Jonathan Mosen:
You never know. Right now we’re focused on our core market of blind and low vision explorers but one never knows what the future might hold in terms of potential new markets. There are some quite specific ones in specialized professions that have already expressed an interest but there are no plans for that now. Our focus is very much on what we’re doing. As the expression we use here, “We stick to our knitting and we want to just continue to save blind and low vision Explorers as best we can.”
Jeff Thompson:
And, getting quality agents.
Jonathan Mosen:
That’s right. I mean that’s an ongoing process. As we said in the modules, only about 5% of the people who express an interest in becoming an agent become an agent and so, we do take that very seriously. It’s a real art form to be a good agent because we always say, “Our Aira agents are a set of eyes, they don’t act as a brain.” They are giving you information about what’s around you, they are interpreting data and turning it from an inaccessible format into something accessible to you but they are in the end working as a set of eyes, so it’s up to you to interpret that data. It’s up to you to make decisions. They are not decision makers and it is a real gift to do that. To simply impart information without the bias of thinking that you might know what the explorer will want to do in a given situation. We do have to be really selective about the agents we bring on board.
Jeff Thompson:
Absolutely. And, CSUN is rolling around again and I see that Aira is gonna have quite a big presence at CSUN 2019.
Jonathan Mosen:
Yes, it will be there. We have a whole bunch of people there for CSUN and giving presentations there too.
Jeff Thompson:
That’s great when they’re at a conference because I’ve been at the NFB conferences there and it’s just a buzz going around. They had the Aira Zone right outside the hall where agents guiding people, talking to them and people were walking around using it for the first time just like you did at CSUN a year ago. Great times are ahead and I’m glad to see all this coming about like what happened in one year, what’s happened in the last three years with Aira? It’s just fun to be part of it and watching it and seeing it come to fruition.
Jonathan Mosen:
It’s a wild ride man and I love it. I absolutely love it. But yeah, I mean conferences like CSUN or NFB and ACB, where they have exhibit halls that are quiet lounge. They’re a really good way to showcase our technology actually.
Jeff Thompson:
Oh yeah.
Jonathan Mosen:
Because I’ve had more than my fair share of wandering around those big exhibit halls and generally, when I’ve gone to these conferences I have been exhibiting somewhere, so my time to wander around was always quite limited and you sort of wander around and you’d go to a table, you’d wait for a break in the conversation and say, “What table are you?” And they’d tell you what company they were from and you’d always feel sort of bad because you go, “Oh thank you,” and move on because it wasn’t one that you were interested in but of course … and then you wouldn’t find the one you really wanted to see some product or other.
Jonathan Mosen:
With Aira, you could be wearing the Horizon glasses or even just using the phone and wander around and an agent will be able to see the signage. Also, if you’ve got the directory there of the exhibit hall and you can say, “There’s a company that I want to visit and their booth number is,” say D22 or something and the agent can quickly … They will usually for an Aira Access location like that have the exhibit hall map data anyway.
Jonathan Mosen:
They’d be able to point you in the right direction of where row D is and move you to the place you want to see and it’s just so more efficient. You’ll get there eventually, there’s no doubt about that but I think that Aira can add such a great level of efficiency to those sorts of experiences.
Jeff Thompson:
That’s one of the biggest things that Nick Ambrosio, he came down from Canada the first time ever being at an NFB convention and he was so nervous about the exhibit hall. Like, “How do you navigate that?” But that is a high anxiety thing, how are you gonna do it? And, with Aira there you can make a plan. Like you said, if you’re crunched for time, efficiency and the ability to get around without … I know exactly what you mean, “Oh, okay. No thanks,” and then you go to the next table, next table. But if there’s 100 exhibitors, you might have missed it by one and it’d take you two hours to get around that place.
Jonathan Mosen:
Yes. The other thing about this. We’ve used this in farmer’s markets as well, Bonnie and I. We would never have gone to a farmer’s market without one of our sighted children before because you’re kind of at their mercy. You wander around and some of those people at the farmer’s markets, they have a real pitter going you know. You go to a store and you say, “What are you selling?” And they’ll say, “We’re selling lemons and we have just got the best lemon,” and off they go and you’re sort of stuck there for two minutes trying to get away because you didn’t want to buy any. It’s applicable in a range of places like markets, exhibit halls.
Jonathan Mosen:
The other thing that you said Jeff is interesting to me about somebody coming to one of these big conventions and as a guy from New Zealand, I remember the first convention I ever went to and it’s daunting because those US conventions are quite unique in their scale.
Jeff Thompson:
3000 people.
Jonathan Mosen:
Yeah, it’s incredible. One of the things that people have said to me is, “You know, Aira sounds pretty cool and all but I have a fundamental concern that Aira will erode people’s blindness skills,” and I understand their concern but in my own situation as somebody who was retreating a little bit because of my hearing impairment and I’ve found that certain noisy situations were just not worth the bother. I didn’t want to be there badly enough to kind of move around in that noisy environment.
Jonathan Mosen:
One think I will say is I think that Aira can meet people where they are on their blindness journey right now. And once, Aira gives you the confidence to move around in an environment that you may not have felt comfortable with doing before. It actually builds up your confidence generally. I know for example that when I’ve used Aira a couple of times in a difficult location, I’ve kind of got a map of it in my head doing it right a couple of times rather than just hunting around, looking for something in a very echoey, noisy environment and finally getting there but not really understanding how I got there because of the degree of sound and stuff going on.
Jonathan Mosen:
An Aira agent allows me to do it completely right, in the quickest way possible, the first couple of times and then I found it’s committed to memory. I actually think that Aira can be a source of giving you a bit of confidence, giving you a lift and that it can enhance our blindness skills over time.
Jeff Thompson:
I think that’s absolutely true because some people might just stay on the couch and decide, “I can’t do that, I can’t do that,” but like you said. You have it in your mind that you’ve completed this before, you got some of it in your memory and that builds confidence. It may initiate that first time trying something that will open up thoughts in your mind that, “I can do this,” and it opens the door. I’m in the camp that I don’t think it will diminish the skills because you do need to use a cane or a guide dog. To be using these, it’s gonna enhance your skills to a point that you’re using them more.
Jonathan Mosen:
Yes, and it’s different from using a sighted guide because if you are going sighted guide with someone, effectively you can zone out because you’re just being led. In the case of Aira, you’re being given information about how to get somewhere but you’re getting there under your own steam, you are using your cane or working with your guide dog. You may, if you’ve expressed a specific location you want to get to, get quite specific directions but in the end that requires brain power. It’s not the same as just going with somebody, a sighted guide. I think it allows us to meet a wide range of blind people where they are and build up on those important skills.
Jeff Thompson:
I joke around with inventing an autonomous elbow but that won’t give me any information that would mean just tagging along. Seeing how my wife uses it, something about it that she’s able to get so much more information when we toured this we were on. I believe Joanne, the agent, was just excited about it because she’s never been on that ship either but between the two of them they were just having a good old time investigating this museum type ship and I was leaning in because I was getting more information than I was able to obtain by being right there. It’s a really neat experience.
Jonathan Mosen:
Yeah, it is a neat experience and it’s about realizing that you can take experiences in a different way from that which you’ve just come to expect as being normal. And another example of this is that Bonnie and I recently went to our 50th birthday party and they had a bunch of fireworks. I stood on the balcony and I heard the fireworks display, which is all I’ve really been able to do before. And you know, I kind of enjoy listening to the fireworks going off and it’s fun. And, a couple of minutes into this, Bonnie said to me, “Hey, why don’t we call an Aira agent because the Aira agent can describe the fireworks to me.”
Jonathan Mosen:
And I thought, “Well yeah,” this was a classic example of where you’ve just gotta change the way you think about these experiences, about visual information and so I thought, “Well, a good idea.” I called the Aira agent and I got a whole new dimension for the first time in my life of this fireworks display and I really got a feel for what people were enjoying visually about the fireworks and the agent seemed to enjoy it too.
Jeff Thompson:
It’s like having audio descriptive real life.
Jonathan Mosen:
Yeah, I mean it’s like live audio described. It’s amazing.
Jeff Thompson:
Well that’s great. Well Jonathan, is there anything else that you would like to tell the listeners?
Jonathan Mosen:
No, just to say we really appreciate all that Blind Abilities has done to tell people about the way that Aira is used. We really value the podcast as a partner and that if anyone has any information that they’d like to obtain from Aira you can go to our website, which is Aira A-I-R-A-.-I-O You can also give us a call seven days a week, 6:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Pacific Time and that’s at (800) 835-1934 and if you want to, you’re welcome to drop me an email. If I’ve said anything that you have questions about and my email address is jonathan.mosen@aira.io and if you want to check how my name is spelt, I’m sure you can check it out in the show notes and I’d be happy to answer any questions but in general, our care team, our sales team are super and they’d be delighted to help you out.
Jeff Thompson:
And, download the free Aira app.
Jonathan Mosen:
Yes, download that thing and give it a spin for a range of offers and see what you think.
Jeff Thompson:
I’m looking forward to it. Thank you very much Jonathan.
Jonathan Mosen:
Thanks Jeff, appreciate it.
Jeff Thompson:
Such a great time talking to Jonathan Mosen and be sure to go check out Aira on the web at A-I-R-A-.-I-O and for the training modules aira.io/training. Take advantage, if you don’t already have the app, download it. To download the Free Aira app, take advantage of the seven days for free, 30 minutes to be used up within a week. As Jonathan says, “Dip your toe in the water, become an Aira Explorer and be sure to check out the growing number of Aira Access locations where you can download the free Aira app, fire it up and boom you are instantaneously an Aira Explorer kicking around block.
Jeff Thompson:
Check it out and enjoy the instant access to information when you need it, when you want it on your time and a big thank you goes out the Chee Chau for your beautiful music? And, you can follow Chee Chau out on Twitter @LCheeChau and once again, I want to thank you for listening. We hope you enjoyed and until next time, bye-bye.
[Music] [Transition noise] -When we share
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